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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29349822">can you call it a nightmare, if it outlasts the night</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liz_isa_fangirl/pseuds/Liz_isa_fangirl'>Liz_isa_fangirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dirty Filthy Love (2004), Gallowglass (TV 1993), Good Omens Extended Universe, Heartlands (2002), Takin' Over the Asylum, Underworld (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Underworld (Movies), It's Free Real Estate, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Magical Realism, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Multi, Not Beta Read - We March Into Hell Like Aziraphale, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Sibling Bonding, Supernatural Elements, Werewolves, bUT DO NOT BE FOOLED! WE ARE HERE FOR THE PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS FIRST AND FOREMOST!, listen i know the LORE is already there but it's MY fanfic and so get ready for some HEADCANONS, not me writing a goddamn crossover for 3 obscure films + the first underworld movie and prequel, this may be cringe but it's MY cringe, yes joe and campbell pine for each other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:48:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,983</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29349822</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liz_isa_fangirl/pseuds/Liz_isa_fangirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe punches a jerk, Campbell makes jokes on national public radio, and ghosts come back to haunt them both.<br/>Or how Campbell Bain and his asylum roommate Joe Gallows fall headfirst into a conspiracy.<br/></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Campbell Bain &amp; Joe (Gallowglass), Charlotte (Dirty Filthy Love) &amp; Eddie McKenna, Charlotte (Dirty Filthy Love)/Mark Furness, Lucian/Sonja (Underworld), Mark Furness &amp; Joe (Gallowglass) &amp; Colin Lawes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>can you call it a nightmare, if it outlasts the night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The title is from the song Human Design by the Narcissistic Cookbook.<br/>This is a crossover with the Underworld franchise, meaning I am using the lore and combining it with my own. Be prepared for headcanons galore for mostly Campbell, Joe, and Colin because It's Free Real Estate.<br/>This is still a WIP, an entire AU that has played out in my head multiple times. I HAD to write it down, it would not leave me alone.<br/>Of note: Joe is 22 and Campbell is 20.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="u"> <b>Nov. 01. 1995<br/></b> </span>
</p>
<p><b>3:25 AM<br/><br/></b> <b></b></p>
<p>Campbell is sweating and his hands are shaking, but his success lies around him in pieces of torn plaster and broken wood. The hallway has been mostly quiet the two hours he’s spent working and he likes it. </p>
<p>He’s sort of had to learn to, in the past year. </p>
<p>Francine and Rosalie are gone, released from St. Jude six months prior. They still come in time and again to visit him but Campbell doesn’t ask them to; he wouldn’t stop by either if he could help it.</p>
<p>Eddie comes by the most — two days every other week. Even getting arrested with Campbell and Rosalie for <em>"trespassing on National Health Property"</em> hasn’t turned Eddie away from him — and for that, Campbell’s grateful. He’s the only consistent friend around nowadays and even thinking it makes it sound pathetic. </p>
<p>The station is gone, its glass windows boarded up and painted over like it never existed in the first place. As if he, Fergus, Rosalie, Francine, and Eddie hadn't put their all into making the hospital radio station functional, making it<em> theirs</em>. </p>
<p>It’s why he’s currently on his knees, quietly, <em>carefully</em>, pulling away the boards on the window. He’s got to make a statement<em> somehow</em>. </p>
<p>But then he hears it:  footsteps. Campbell’s grip on the hammer tightens. </p>
<p>Even from afar, Dr. Winters looks unimpressed. </p>
<p>Fergus has been dead and buried for a year and three months; the voice message his da left him is true, has been true for the past five weeks; the rest of his belongings arrived in the mail a week ago and he’s had to watch that happen, as one by one, his entire life seems to be cementing further and further into the little room at the end of the hallway in Corridor D. </p>
<p>Campbell’s got his radio show, his Gold Show, every Friday and Monday for three hours; it’s his ticket out, the only one he has, and if he loses it—</p>
<p>Campbell takes a deep breath and steadfastly ignores Dr. Winters’ approach. He brings the hammer down again, this time as hard and as loud as he can because why the hell not, the doc’s already seen him. </p>
<p>Five years. </p>
<p>Campbell has been here since he was 15. </p>
<p>Fergus had been 24. His stay was supposed to be a month. The month became three, then a year. Year turned to three to four to seven years and then suddenly Fergus had had the rest of his life to look forward to in St. Jude. </p>
<p>He died at thirty-one. </p>
<p>There was nothing left to do. </p>
<p>Campbell could spit. He gets up, walks towards Winters, and speaks instead.</p>
<p>
  <em>“You lot may have gotten rid of all the equipment but it’s still a radio room, no matter how many cushions you’ve stuffed in there or what the sign on the door says. She’s suffocating with all the extra shit you’ve shoveled in there. Let her breathe."</em>
</p>
<p>He swings his arm once, the one with the hammer, for emphasis. He’s still plenty far. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>&lt;-&gt;</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He waved his arms around and needless to say, his brilliant plan fell apart quickly after that. He’d been sedated and Campbell<em> remembers. </em> </p>
<p>Remembers thrashing around, trying to get away from the nurses’ iron grip on his wrists and ankles. </p>
<p>He remembers the way his arm throbbed days after, not from the manhandling, but from the walloping the arm holding the hammer had gotten.</p>
<p>He remembers going limp, bending enough for the middle of his spine to briefly touch the ground.</p>
<p>Campbell remembers Isabelle there, on a rare nightshift; he remembers the disappointed look she gave him as she saw him carried down the hall. </p>
<p>He hadn’t cared; he had stared right back at her, tongue between his teeth, a misshapen smile on his face. </p>
<p>Isabelle had <em>still </em>been looking at him and no wonder Francine had always been screaming whenever<em> this </em>had happened (among the other reasons of course). As he was carried away past the nurse’s station, Campbell had thrown his head back and laughed long and hard.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&lt;-&gt;</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em> This is going to be the rest of your life</em>, is Campbell’s last, wild thought before he’s out like a light, lying in a stretcher behind closed doors. </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span class="u"><b>Nov. 01. 1995</b> </span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>11:19 AM</b>
</p>
<p>As soon as he’s checked into St. Jude, the bloke in the beater tank abruptly grabs him by the arm, and Joe, already restless, instantly tenses up.</p>
<p>He’s led into a room, where the other residents are avidly watching the telly as if it holds all the answers to their troubles. </p>
<p>Joe can’t hear a thing it’s saying, not with the ringing noise in his ear, but he<em> can </em>feel fingernails digging into his skin; he does not flinch. He won’t. </p>
<p>Standing before everyone in a plain t-shirt, worn trousers, beat-up trainers, and unruly hair, he says nothing.</p>
<p>Feeling self-conscious, he holds his roughed-up skateboard under his arm like his life depends on it. </p>
<p>“Go on now”, beater tank nurse growls impatiently. “Do something, <em> boy</em>, we ‘avent got all day.”</p>
<p>So Joe does.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&lt;-&gt;</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To the surprise and delight of the people in the room, the newcomer abruptly swings his elbow into the nursing assistant’s face, who didn’t see it coming until after he’s crashed out the doorway. </p>
<p>“<em><strong>My name. Is Joe</strong> </em>.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>&lt;-&gt;</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em> “Stuart”, </em> says the other man, with a mean grin on his face. Joe barely hears him; his fellow inpatients are chanting his name loudly and in the commotion, he barely has time to duck away before Stuart is launching himself at him.</p>
<p>It’s not a fair fight; Joe has given Stuart an excuse to use brute force and he does so gleefully. The skirmish ends before it truly starts, with Joe on the floor, wiping the blood from his nose and dragging his fingers through his hair. The streak of red left behind, paired with his eyes, completes the picture of a cornered wild animal.</p>
<p>Several nurses are keeping the other people in the room away from where he is and Stuart’s still got him by the shirt. Joe wrestles himself away from his grip, until his back is touching the wall.</p>
<p>”Ssst-stop.” He takes several deep breaths but doesn’t dare close his eyes; he needs to keep the little calm he has. </p>
<p>“I can walk in here on my own. And stop touching me, dammit! Reminding me of Sandor, you are. 'Least I punched you first, punched you at all; I used to let him bloody me up, wouldn’t do a thing about it. I know you wanted to, I know the look. But I got you first. I’m not stupid anymore.”</p>
<p>Stuart scowls like he wants to spit at him but thinks it a waste of energy. “Maybe not, but you<em> are </em>mad; proof enough, with you attacking me. And only on your first day. I guess that’s explanation enough for why you’re here.”</p>
<p>He storms off then and Joe says nothing. </p>
<p>He’s heard it all before; Tilly had said it enough times, calling Sandor everything under the moon: <em> bananas, off the wall, after lunch. </em></p>
<p>
  <em> Mad.  </em>
</p>
<p>Joe had been in hard denial then; he had stared at Tilly in the face and denied it all - told her not to say it - and looking back, Joe knows that had been what run her down in the end. Why she left, even though she had promised at his bedside in hospital that she would take care of him.</p>
<p>And she had. </p>
<p>But taking care of someone wasn’t healing them and Tilly learned that the hard way and in the end, Joe had been the one to tell her to leave. Had begged her to. He’d been breaking her and he hadn’t even meant to; she was his foster sister, a loyal companion through seven years of a nightmare household. They had escaped together, wrecked but still intact enough to sail away to each of their own lives and Joe wasn’t going to pull her down anymore. If he was going to sink, he would do it alone.</p>
<p>He had already seen what happened when someone tried to drown you with them; Joe had survived Sandor, but only barely. He hadn’t been about to subject Tilly to the same agony. </p>
<p>Nine months ago, Joe packed his bags in the middle of the night and left. Tilly had nightwork at the hospital canteen and would be none the wiser until she returned to the flat at 6 AM but Joe was long gone by then. He had thrown his mobile at a passing lorry.</p>
<p>He’s been on his own ever since, traveling up the island because there’s nothing else for him to do. That’s what gave him away if anything; sleeping on a park bench had been an accident, but even more so had been breaking down in the back of a police vehicle because it had reminded him of<em> everything.  </em></p>
<p>He’d been out of it, when the cage doors had finally opened and Joe, blinded for a seconds after, had been so sure the person manhandling him was Sandor - <em> his grip was the same, the thumb and forefinger squeezing between his shoulderblades - </em>that he more or less launched himself out and took the officer down with him. </p>
<p>He doesn’t remember what he’d been yelling but it’d been enough to land him here. </p>
<p>The other patients are watching him and Joe is only just noticing this now, knows he’s spaced out, that he most likely has a bug-eyed look to him, eyes wide open and seeing nothin in front of him. He blinks, taking it all in. </p>
<p>He hears murmurs, sees the shuffling of the chairs back into their proper places, and the other inpatients sitting down. The nurses still watch him.</p>
<p>
  <em> Mad. </em>
</p>
<p>Sandor still haunts him, still lurks at the edges of his mind, even after his death. He understands now that Sandor<em> had </em>been all the things Tilly had said he was. But Joe had been sure about one thing, at the end of it all; Sandor had been in pain.</p>
<p><em> ‘He was just in pain’</em>, he had said, had repeated to anyone who would listen.</p>
<p>Joe touches the scar above his lip, remembers a crazed looked and a sharp, dopey smile from a driver’s side door. Thinks <em> ‘I don’t know about that tonight’, </em>just like he did nine months ago, visiting his therapist for the last time.</p>
<p>The pain didn’t mean Sandor hadn’t enjoyed feeling it. Inflicting it. It’s obvious now, far and away in the future. </p>
<p>Joe has the urge to smash the telly open.</p>
<p>He curls in on himself instead, watching the nurses out of the corner of his eye watching him; he can see them fingering the sedative in their pocket. </p>
<p>He stays sitting down, idly plucking at the hole in the knee of his trousers. He doesn't know where his skateboard’s gone; it rolled away in the commotion. He is tired.</p>
<p>A nurse -- <em> Isabelle</em>, his frazzled mind gurgles out -- approaches him a few minutes later. She gives him once over and kicks her foot out and Joe flinches hard enough that he hits his head rather hard against the wall. </p>
<p>Something bumps against his foot. Joe opens his eyes.</p>
<p>His skateboard, looking like it always does <em> (like shit, but it’s his.) </em>He doesn’t look up at Isabelle as she speaks.</p>
<p>“You’re room’s ready Joe. You’ll be sharing with Campbell Bain.” She turns away, carrying on as if everything were normal. Might as well be.</p>
<p>Joe keeps his head down, stares at his hands in his lap. His knuckles don’t hurt too much, the sharp pain is familiar enough that it doesn’t bother him. It’s better than looking up; if he looks up, he’ll give away that he knows Campbell Bain is staring at him. </p>
<p>Joe takes a deep breath. Abruptly, he stands and walks right past his new roommate. He has no energy for introductions.</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>next chapter: some actual dialogue between Campbell and Joe!!! Oh BOY!!!<br/>Did anyone catch my ribbing at the use of Joe's surname? Anyone? Dear lord, I hope ppl actually read this. A little validation would be nice &lt;3333.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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